Club Spies
by Omnicat
Summary: Rebels and revolutionaries and double agents, oh my.


_Rebels and revolutionaries and double agents, oh my._

**Club Spies**

It was comforting to know that no matter how distant the microchips you travelled, how few friends or how many enemies surrounded you, the clubs were always the same.

Mara pressed her hands to the glass and her face as the elevator carried her up toward the towers of Tron City and the music from the End Of Line swelled at her back. The lights of the city reflected in her eyes, and she thought, _Look at this, guys. Look at the beautiful system we're fighting for._

She _so_ had to bring them to this club once Clu was gone.

**I-oOo-I**

"You're a long way from Argon, program," a seductively static-laden voice murmured in Mara's ear, bare nanoseconds into her first visit to the Grid's most famed establishment.

"W-what?" she demanded. Whirling straight into the speaker's personal space, she managed "What makes you think –" before trailing off in slack-jawed awe.

"Pretty," the vision in white purred over the thrum of the music, leaning in even closer as she traced a yellow secondary circuit and made Mara shiver down to her core processor. Dear Creator, did this program have circuits on her fingertips? "Pigment these yourself?"

"Y-yes. I did."

"It contrasts nicely," the siren said, splaying her hand gently on Mara's chest and raising hexagonal silver eyes beneath dark, heavy lashes to the teal swirl of Mara's hair. "If all programs had such a sense for chromatics, the shell design algorithms would become obsolete."

"Thanks –" Mara started, quirking a tentative smile –

"But you stand out like a Bostrumite."

– and stopped dead.

"Too much diversity is..." The siren cocked her head, her eyes meeting Mara's briefly on their way from her hair to her lips. "...discouraged, here. Back'em up and pack'em up. Life is easier that way."

The program's circuit-tipped fingers brushed Mara's light lines one last time as she moved around her and made to leave. Mara twisted after her, unable to tear her eyes away.

"And you're less likely scare away your informants when you don't stand out like a warning sign," she whispered in Mara's ear.

Mara could only stare.

**I-oOo-I**

She slid into the booth, cutting off the siren's exit just as she made to rise.

"What do you think?" she asked.

The siren sank back, rearranging herself against the plush seat slowly, artfully. Her eyes roamed up and down Mara's body, taking in the all-white circuits, the white hair, and everything in between.

"A bit boring," she said, a smile on her pale, pink lips. "Much better."

Mara grinned and held out a hand. "Mara. Simulation maintenance and repair."

"Gem. Arena armory siren."

They shook. Gem's fingertip circuit brushed the one on Mara's wrist; deliberately, her twinkling eyes said.

**I-oOo-I**

"I asked around about you," Mara said, shouting to make herself heard over the music, half again as loud here on the dance floor as it had been in the booths.

Gem ground the full length of her body against Mara's to reply, "And what did you hear?" against her ear. Mara clutched Gem's sides for balance, trying and failing not to look like she was enjoying this as much as she was.

"Nothing. Very _emphatically_ nothing. Your secret keepers'll give you away at this rate."

She linked her hands behind Gem's back, taking the tactile way there.

Gem smiled.

**I-oOo-I**

Gem didn't _stop_ smiling all the way to her home, hanging on Mara's arm like she hung on her every word, nor as she password protected the folder, or crowded Mara against the wall and licked her lips, leaving an ever so faint glow of residual energy in the wake of her tongue. And perhaps not even when she cupped Mara's face in her hands and closed the distance; it was hard to tell mid-kiss.

The energy sheen acted like a conduit. Mara had a split nano to vow she would _finally_ get the hang of that trick once the war was over before Gem's input started in earnest and that thought process got bumped to the back of the queue. She started with a peck that was barely more than a brush, a spark, but came back again and again, a little longer and firmer, with a little more warmth and charge, until that delicious tingle reached all the way to Mara's ears.

Gem's hands slid down her shoulders and biceps; she dragged one finger along each circuit on her forearms, taking Mara's breath away. Knowing what was coming next, Mara opened her own hands for Gem to slip hers into, and let her raise and pin them to the wall on either side of her head.

"Open up," Gem whispered against her cheek, and Mara let her head fall back, and did so.

The first surge of Gem inside her, no resistance, no restraint, was incredible. Mara had never felt so close to burning out, so full and bright, so _good_.

And then there was no more incoming or outgoing – only the two of them as one, energy flowing between them unhindered.

Pressing her face into the warm crook of Gem's neck, Mara whimpered as the backdraft hit and drained her down to her knees, all of that built-up energy crashing back down like a wave and flowing with its momentum into the other side of its container. Gem let out a deep, shuddering sigh, a crackle of static, in return, her circuits flaring up so bright their glow lit up the insides of Mara's eyelids.

From one to the other the energy flowed, slowly evening out. Eventually Mara's eyes fluttered open, and she lifted her head from Gem's shoulder. But the friction of that little movement was too much just yet. Gem drew in breath with a hiss and Mara yelped as an visible spark went _snap!_ where the short line of light at the center of Gem's chest brushed up against the cluster on Mara's.

The intensity of the sensation made Mara's knees buckle, but Gem laughed, affectionate and indulgent and beautiful, and caught her around the waist. Gently caressing Mara's cheek with her free hand, taking care not to graze her with her circuit-lit pointer finger, she hoisted Mara up against her hip and led her to a soft reclining platform.

_Shhh, shhh, it's alright program, let me take care of you._

Smiling and gorgeous, Gem straddled her hips, and Mara lay back and let the Siren flex her functions to her heart's content.

It was the worst kind of cliché, a mistake only a half-coded beta or a particularly clueless ISO would make. Falling for the affections and attentions of a Siren when they were only enjoying their directive? That was like thinking a system monitor hated you because of the joy they took in beating you up, or that there was something actually wrong with your stuff because a maintenance and repair program wanted to take it apart the moment you put it into their hands. But that milli Mara understood exactly why it kept happening again and again all over the Grid. A program could dabble in anything, even pick up actual skill in a wide range of functions. But nothing would ever match up to the performance of a program coded for the purpose.

Calling up or shutting down personalised circuit lines and the level of sensitivity they brought, for their own sake or that of the base meridians deep down; playing with pressure by pinching the energy flow to a bottleneck here and opening it up wide there; speeding up the energy cyles and their processing and everything else with it, only to bring it to abrupt, sensation pile-up of a halt. Gem's every touch was a masterpiece, turning their shared circuit into art. She was a better judge of the limits of Mara's system than Mara herself. When finally she entwined their hands and locked their lips again, the resulting hard reboot was _perfect_.

**I-oOo-I**

"A firewall's been at your code," Gem observed, quietly, because she was sprawled out across Mara's chest with barely a pixel of space left between them.

"How could you tell?" Mara murmured absentmindedly. Internal diagnostics clouded her vision and she had to fight the urge to go into a soft reboot until all her power stores had levelled out. It would have been a compliment to Gem's skill, but tonight was a strange city with a strange program and danger at every door. Maybe next time, if there was a next time.

(Please let there be a next time.)

Gem took pity; she drew away, leaving only a hand lightly on the cluster of light lines over Mara's ribs. Her energy cycling instantly began to draw even.

"Intuition," she answered with a smirk. "That's good, though. Zuse prefers to deal with programs who can't be hacked just like that."

Mara's mouth fell open, and she shot upright. "This was a _test?_"

"But what a test, wouldn't you say?" Smiling, eyes lidded, Gem tilted Mara's chin up and slanted her mouth over hers. Then she stood, fluid like water, and held out a hand. "Come. We have a lot to discuss."


End file.
